Sedition

This is how it starts.

The attorney general of Texas sued four other states in the Supreme Court, demanding their 2020 election results be overturned, which in addition to sowing chaos within those states and in Congress (because, let us not forget, those ballots were for more offices than one), would deny Joe Biden enough electoral votes to be inaugurated.  What seemed at first a public relations gambit and a nuisance suit by a politician looking for a preemptive pardon while being seriously investigated for federal crimes when all of his deputies accused him of corruption, quickly became a Trump loyalty test and a litmus test for a statistical majority of AlwaysTrumpers.  Seventeen other Republican attorneys-general signed on, supported by 126 US House Republicans.  (Trump requested the congressional signatures, and he made it clear he was checking the list to see who was naughty and who was nice.) 

This inspired the first use of the S word when the four states being attacked issued their withering responses, with the attorney general of Pennsylvania calling the suit a "seditious abuse of the judicial process."  

 Eventually 20 states, mostly but not all with Democratic governors and administrations, joined to oppose the case.  They and many commentators expressed shock that so many Republicans would join in denying the basis for elected representative government, otherwise known as democracy.  But sedition? 

Following the unanimous decision of the Supreme Court denying the suit brought by the attorney general of Texas that demanded essentially that the 2020 election be overturned. the chairman of the Texas Republican Party issued a statement suggesting that in response: "Perhaps law abiding states should bond together and form a Union of states that will abide by the Constitution."

Okay.  Now that's sedition.  

Even before this, Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) requested that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refuse to seat any members of the newly elected Congress in January who signed on to this suit.  He specifically cited Section 3 of the 14th Amendment "written after the Civil War to bar from government any traitors who would seek to destroy the Union." 

 He said this applies to 126 Republicans who signed as supporters of the Texas suit.  They included the Member who would likely become the Speaker if Republicans regain the majority.   "Stated simply, the men and women who would act to tear the United States government apart cannot serve as Members of Congress."  He called them " Members trying to overturn the election and make Donald Trump an unelected dictator."  

So this is what I meant about the Civil War.  Sedition is a loaded word and dodgy legal concept in a democracy, but when it involves issues that hark back to the War Between the States, it's clear, and it's a fighting word.

 Do Republican party leaders seriously want to start a civil war?  Probably not, at least not directly.  They support Trump's dictatorship perpetuation effort because 1) it's a spectacular money-raiser, 2) they all want the fealty of the AlwaysTrumpers once Trump is off center stage, and 3) solidifying the idea that Joe Biden is not a legitimate President will make it much easier for Mitch McConnell etc. to undermine and paralyze the incoming administration, setting Republican up for congressional victories in 2022 which could easily win them both Houses.

 But it's a dangerous game.  History tells us that Hitler was first elected because of a lot of factions out for themselves, trying to knock each other off.  They didn't started out enthralled with the Furher.  But that's where they soon found themselves.

If they don't necessarily want two sets of states at war with each other, they are fine with two utterly different realities at war with each other, creating an ungovernable country is a time of obvious crisis, apart from the underlying meta-crisis which threatens civilization and life as we know it on the planet.

This particular circus could have been much worse. Resisting it took heroic election officials in the states, the state and federal courts on every level that have turned back some 60 cynical suits so far, the media that won't swallow this.  Notably no Senators actually signed on, and several Republican Senators spoke against the suit (including one from Texas.)  

But it's still pretty bad.  Three-quarters of the Republicans in the US House, who were fine with the elections that elected them, joined the chief law enforcement officers of 18 states in demanding that the results of lawful elections be overturned, with no evidence behind their assertions, in a document that would get a high school sophomore flunked in Civics (if they still taught that),  Composition, arithmetic (a mad assertion that Biden's victory was mathematically impossible) and even spelling.  There must be law professors up on ledges all over academia.

 There will likely be more cynical court cases filed and thrown out, and there may be a play to try to get Congress to challenge electors in early January.  It takes only one Rep. and one Senator to start the process, which involves each house debating the challenges for two hours and then voting.  It takes both Houses to support the challenge, and the Trumpeteers are unlikely to get even the Senate. (I count at least 4 Republican votes against.)  

But that word is out there, and the idea is bigger than it's been, maybe since the Civil War.  (The S word being Sedition or Secession, depending on which side are you on.)  There may yet be violence around this.  But even if this particular typhoon blows itself out, the damage is probably deeper and longer. 

This Week in American History

More Americans were killed by the Covid crisis on December 7, 2020--earlier this week-- than were killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, that led to America declaring war on Japan and entering World War II, committing billions of dollars and the full attention of American society on the goal of winning that war fought across two immense oceans.

  Some 405,000 Americans were killed in the four years of that war, the largest death toll of any American war before or since, except the Civil War.  America is currently on track to see more than 405,000 Covid deaths in less than one year, by the end of 2020.  We're at some 286,000 now, the equivalent in American deaths of 5 Vietnams.

More Americans were killed by the Covid crisis on December 9, 2020--namely, yesterday-- than were killed in terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, which led to the expenditure of many billions of dollars in conflicts that are still not over.  Both events thoroughly transformed American society.

Congress has currently allocated zero new dollars to addressing the Covid crisis or its economic and human effects.  The President of the United States is AWOL.  So are Republicans in Congress, and many Republican officeholders in the states.

This is America as 2020 ends.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote: 12/9/2020

 

"...the song of the siren which is heard only by those who no longer travel, no longer exert themselves, who are exhausted, and want to remain transfigured in a single place which contains all places."

Carlos Fuentes

Defining the Precipice

 Let us recognize the historical moment, for what it is and what it may become. For what it is, because we are befogged by denial that is natural self-protection, helpful if we successfully whistle past the dark, but it can also make us more vulnerable and less capable. For what it may become, because if the worst happens there will be voices loudly crying out, who could have foreseen this? 

 First: We are in the teeth of an extraordinary infectious disease pandemic, ignored and brutally denied by the Executive branch and effectively--and just as brutally-- ignored by Congress. This pandemic is accompanied by a growing economic crisis, with millions unemployed, losing unemployment insurance lifelines, facing evictions, hunger and collapse.

 At the same time we are on the edge of an extraordinary political and perhaps societal crisis of potentially disturbing proportion. While the current Administration blunders around the margins of the Covid crisis, it is consumed by what is variously described as an attempted coup or official insurrection, trying to scuttle election results and retain the dictator apprentice by any means.

 This is a seriously dangerous combination. The Covid infections, hospitalizations and deaths are just going to get higher for at least the next six weeks. Collapse of the health care system in some places is threatening or underway, and that is almost certainly going to spread. When hospitals are overwhelmed and deaths are doubling in a month’s time, other aspects of society are also threatened, beginning with grocery stores and the food chain. Covid alone—and the failure to confront it as an urgent national crisis—could seriously compromise American society as we know it. But instead of addressing this utterly obvious prospect, the current Chief Executive is denying it in favor of causing a political crisis which looks increasingly like it will threaten the social order for some considerable time to come, all on its own.

 But especially in combination with the Covid crisis in its upcoming darkest days, this political crisis could lead to serious societal breakdowns in the near future. So far the strength of democratic traditions and institutions, and in particular the election officials and the jurists who are doing their jobs (many in both categories are Republicans), are holding things together.  Others with power are responsibly supporting order by their restraint.

 Absent a sudden shocking decision from the US Supreme Court, it appears that the 2020 election results will hold. So apart from a long-term political struggle with potentially devastating effects, the near future threat then becomes the eruption of violence. 

 That it hasn’t happened yet seems to indicate that the residual stability in our society is holding. But the ground for violence is certainly being overtly prepared. That the Michigan Secretary of State, who oversees elections, should face 16 or so armed men outside her home cursing and threatening her in the presence of her four year old son as they decorate the house for Christmas is but the latest incident.

 Behind these threats is the contention made by Republican leaders on every level, as well as the vast majority of Republican voters, completely without credible proof, that the 2020 election results are illegitimate. This has led Heather Cox Richardson to cite the election of 1888 as an historical precedent, when Republicans subverted that election, and in 1892, when they subverted the American economy in order to defeat the Democratic President. It was a series of crises that caused devastating pain, just so that wealthy Republican backers could keep and expand their power.

 But others see an earlier precedent for not only an undemocratic and anti-Constitutional political crisis, but a societal one as well. Rep. James Clyburn calls it insurrection, and so does William Saletan in his Slate piece, “Republicans are the party of Civil War”: 

" The insurrection has been boiling at pro-Trump rallies in the past few weeks. In Georgia, amid chants of “victory or death,” speakers have vowed to “remove” a new Democratic administration, arguing that it “doesn’t have the military on their side.” At a rally led by Donald Trump Jr., a speaker warned, “We’re getting ready to start shooting.” Last weekend in Michigan, a crowd cheered as a member of the Proud Boys declared, “We don’t want a civil war, but we’re already in one. And we’re in it to win it.” In Florida, rally leaders called the election result a “war on our homeland” and pledged, “We will not allow them to fire a man for doing his job perfect.”

 In Arizona, a speaker demanded the imprisonment of President-elect Joe Biden, former President Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton. “We have to protect [Trump] at any cost,” he said. Another speaker denounced House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, calling for “rebellion” and adding, “I’d love to see half of these people hung by the neck.” The crowd shouted its approval."

 Fueling this mob violence fervor are Trump’s fascistic tactics in a multiple of impeachable offences were he not voted out in a month, from firing or threatening to fire members of his own administration who don’t support his blatant coup attempt, and demanding “the names” of the pitiful two dozen Republican lawmakers the Washington Post found would admit he lost the election, to directly pressuring governors and other officials in battleground states to reverse their state’s voting results, a criminal act.

 The next step is actual violence, and whether it sparks widespread violence. It is not inevitable but the table is set for it. Then in the teeth of pandemic we are in brand new territory, at least since the Civil War. What would be the state and federal response? If a Trump “enemy” is murdered, will he pardon the murderers?

 More Saletan: "Some zealots are already taking action. They’ve targeted election supervisors in several states, issuing death threats against officials in Vermont, calling for violence against the family of Arizona’s secretary of state, and orchestrating a hunt for a voting machine contractor who is now in hiding. On Monday, Gabriel Sterling, the Republican manager of Georgia’s elections, reported a death threat against an election worker, harassment of the worker’s family, and sexual threats against Raffensperger’s wife. “Stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence,” Sterling pleaded, addressing Trump at a televised briefing. “Someone’s going to get shot. Someone’s going to get killed.”

 That night, on Twitter, Trump posted a video of Sterling’s plea. He dismissed it. He accused Raffensperger and Kemp of knowing about, and refusing to uncover, “massive voter fraud.” The next day, in a speech recorded at the White House, he denounced both men again. And at Wednesday’s rally in Georgia, Wood and Powell, accompanied by Flynn, joined the attack. Wood accused Sterling of conspiring with China to manipulate the election. He demanded that Kemp and Raffensperger be thrown in jail. “We’re going to slay Goliath, the communists, the liberals,” he vowed. “Joe Biden will never set foot in the Oval Office.”

 So far it’s limited to incendiary talk, and not a lot of people.  But the matches—and the guns—are real.

Poetry Monday: Wish

 My lizard, my lively writher,

 May your limbs never wither,

 May the eyes in your face

 Survive the green ice

 Of envy’s mean gaze;

 May you live out your life

 Without hate, without grief,

 And your hair ever blaze,

 In the sun, in the sun, 

When I am undone, 

When I am no one.

 -Theodore Roethke 

 These days I tend to be hungry for the worn words of poets writing when they are older. They engage me for the obvious reason. But occasionally I recall a poem of my youth, if not by an absolutely youthful poet.

 I read this Roethke poem for the first time when I was 18, in the pages of a literary magazine in the college library during my first year. Although it is addressed to a young wife by a slightly older voice, it embodied in its words and cadences a feeling it evoked and expressed in me, surrounded as I was by lovely young women every day. I ardently wished this for them all. 

 When I took my first literature classes the following year, I would never have mentioned this poem, which would have therefore been exposed to the smirking charge of sentimentality. And perhaps it is sentimental and embarrassing. But now too old to care about that anyway, I find this feeling has lasted, from the day I first heard these lines in my mind and held them in my heart.

 This poem was in the queue for a future Monday, but I moved it up after belatedly learning of a death this past August of someone significant in my past. Perhaps the poem does not pertain since I have outlived her, though despite the recurrent health challenges, she had a rich, full—one may even say fabulous-- life. But in the end the poem is not about the life, but the wish. And it was always my wish for her.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote: 12/03/20

"We do have a choice to make, each one of us: Do we want to be part of the solution to this horrifying surge, or do we want to be the problem? Because where you fall in this effort now has a life-or-death consequence, possibly for people you know and love, but certainly for people across the county who are loved by others.”

Barbara Ferrer

Los Angeles County Public Health Director

The Perspective of Amnesia

 Back before our main viewscreen went flat with all- digital streaming, we connected our boob tube to cable and a VCR. In those days—way back, 10 years ago and more-- the VCR/television interface was about the last technology I understood, and so in my personal viewing area/den/library/mancave (a word that did not yet exist), I hooked up two VCRs and a TV so I could tape from the TV and from another VCR. 

 I taped movies and plays, series TV and a lot of PBS, even some C-Span, plus music performances, poets reading, lots of talk show and other interviews, and so on. I had thematic tapes (50s s/f movies, Truffaut films, Obama speeches etc.) and a few tapes of short clips I wanted to preserve for one reason (or one project) or another.

 I can’t tape anything anymore from that old cable-cut TV but I can still play those tapes on one of the still working VCRs that connects to it. Recently I thought I’d revisit one of those clips tapes to accompany bedtime snacks—short pieces that wouldn’t keep me up too long.

 It didn’t work.  That is, the tape worked.  But not the sleeping part.

 The tape I found had clips from late 2002 to probably 2010. It had pieces of the kind I was seeking—with Julie Taymor on performance, RSC’s John Barton on Shakespeare, novelist Isabel Allende, film director Gregory Nava, John Cage, visionary architect William McDonough, etc.

 But there was more. There was Harper’s editor and writer Lewis Lapham, author Mark Hertsgaard, and that artist of reviewers John Leonard, all talking to Bill Moyers; and reporter/author Chris Hedges talking to Michael Moore.

 Lapham and Moyers discussed the 2002 elections, the first congressional election after the selection of George W. Bush for President.

 Remember him? For a long time Bush dominated our political frustrations and horror. He brought us wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the return of torture, the Katrina debacle and so much more. He was the iconic combination of arrogance, incompetence and evil.

 An icon no longer, though. Nobody mentions G.W. Bush anymore, except as this benign and nostalgic figure who paints pictures and jokes around with Michelle Obama at state funerals. Perhaps we’ve mostly forgotten how maddening and painful his presidency was because we had to.

 But then came Trump-- it was like taping over a terrible movie in our memory with an even worse one. Our Bush years amnesia may have been necessary for our mental health and ability to go on. (And after all, they ended with millions on the Washington mall to witness the improbable inauguration of the best President in a generation or more.)

 But this Lapham interview, and others on this tape that followed, preserved the moment, at this point less than two years into that slough of despond. And it’s clear that so much of what we’ve suffered for the past four years was a louder repetition or continuation or extension of what was happening then.

 In 2002, Republicans defied precedent to win both houses of Congress. “The oligarchy won,” Lapham said. The winners “represent the frightened rich.” For them, “democracy has served its purpose and run its course. We will now protect ourselves.” Partly by being and becoming so much richer than most Americans.

 Lapham observed that Republicans “believe in their reactionary ideology with religious passion.” In his commentary, Moyers noted that moderate Republicans of past decades were gone—they were now “united behind a right wing agenda.” 

 “If you like the Supreme Court that put George Bush in the White House,” Moyers continued, “ you will swoon with what’s coming. And if you like God in government, get ready for the rapture.” It’s a heady mixture of “piety, profits and military might, all joined at the hip with ideology and money. Lots of money.”

Later in the tape, Mark Hertsgaard discussed his first two books reporting on environmental degradation around the world, especially the climate crisis, and how the world views the US. In explaining how world leaders were disappointed with Bush, he reminds me that before Trump dumped the Paris Agreement, Bush took the US out of the Kyoto Treaty, its climate crisis predecessor. Before Trump sanctioned the International Criminal Court, Bush refused to join it. Before Trump blew up the Iran nuclear agreement and other arms control pacts, Bush left an anti-ballistic missile treaty. In general, Hertsgaard said, Bush alienated the world with American arrogance.

 Lapham and Hertsgaard both talked about the US sponsorship of commodifying everything, while Julie Taymor spoke of the dangers of commercializing art. These complaints sound quaint—not because they weren’t true, and aren’t even more true now, but because no one bothers to complain about them anymore, it’s all just accepted.

 In a clip from a few years later, John Leonard mentioned how good Republicans were getting at “gang tactics” (quoting a noted Republican conservative.) “If everything becomes partisan,” he said, “it’s a “bloodthirsty crusade” akin to the French Revolution.  All hail Mitch McConnell.

 Leonard added his laments about the deadening effect even on the language of a thoroughly commodified society. “It’s sell, sell, sell’ buy, buy, buy, that’s it...Gone are scruple, gravity or grace.”

 Moyers quoted from Leonard’s book, about how celebrity shifts shape “to reflect whatever society at any given time has been taught to value or to fear.” He asked Leonard what this society values as reflected in its celebrities.

 “We’re taught to value the Donald Trumps of the world,” Leonard said, “the money-makers. We define success...as money.”

 It’s always dismaying to hear the name you’re trying to escape by burrowing into the past. But it happens, because Trump has been around a long time, building this image firmly in the American psyche. It happened to me a few months before, when I was innocently watching an old episode of the classic 90s series that embodies innocence: “Northern Exposure.” Maurice justified evading taxes through a loophole by exclaiming, “I’ll bet Donald Trump doesn’t pay any taxes!”  So I guess when the New York Times confirmed a decade or so later, it wasn't much of a surprise.

 Lapham, Hertsggard, Leonard all mentioned the unholy alliance between the oligarchical elites and right wing zealots, as well as money worship and the dominance of celebrity. Can we wonder then where Trump came from in 2016? Where he took us is much farther down this path of destruction. But that Trump was so prefigured, that he distinguished himself mostly by managing to leapfrog G.W. Bush to become the worst President in modern American history, if not all time—makes this stuff we had to forget completely contemporary. 

 The tape stops with Michael Moore interviewing author Chris Hedges, probably about the time that his 2009 book came out, titled The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle. This idea didn’t just echo those interviewees earlier in the decade. Books with themes like that weren’t new. There were plenty in the 80s (Amusing Ourselves to Death, for one) and 90s. Like those interviews, Hedges emphasized the role of elites in making money, wealth and celebrity the paramount values--while killing all other values. But it was hearing his forecast of the outcome in this present moment, that further rattled my perspective. 

 Michael Moore’s question was well put, though it wasn’t exactly the one Hedges answered. “I wondered for a long time if a society that was founded on genocide and then built on the backs of slaves, is ultimately a country that, if it doesn’t redeem itself for that behavior, just won’t last.”

 “I think it’s dying,” Hedges replied. “It’s composed of a giddy intoxication with illusion—that’s what happens when societies die. The worse it gets the more disconnected they often become. And that’s how you end up with demagogues, and tyrants who promise magic.”

 And that’s how we did. 

 Voted out of office, Trump continues to sell delusions for profit—and it’s pretty clear that’s mainly why he’s still doing it. He’s banking $150 million and counting, just in case, but as long as there is demand he will loudly supply. So far he’s left us with a smoldering government, and half a country that apparently believes these delusions so deeply that they can’t even believe in the reality of the virus that is killing them.

 So now I wonder: once Trump is gone from the White House, do we go into a well-earned defensive amnesia? Perfectly natural to let the brain and the heart heal. But it didn’t seem to work out so well last time.

Poetry Monday: The World Is Too Much With Us

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

 Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;

 Little we see in Nature that is ours; 

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

 The winds that will be howling at all hours,

 And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

 For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

 It moves us not—Great God! I’d rather be

 A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

 So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

 Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

 Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

 Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

 William Wordsworth

 1806

Transition

Jeremy Stahl’s headline in Monday’s Slate said it best: It Was a Good Day for Democracy. Pennsylvania judges not only threw the latest Trump case out of court but told them not to bother coming back. Then the minor functionary Republican holdout in Michigan was satisfied with his fifteen minutes and joined two Democrats to certify Michigan’s election. (One of the Rs wondered if they could just adjourn without deciding and learned this wasn’t an option.  Someone has to win, someone has to lose, not everybody gets a trophy, they were told.) 

Update: On Friday and Saturday, Trumpists lost two more baseless cases in PA, one in federal appeals court, the other in PA Supreme Court.  The PA Supreme Court decision was "with prejudice," which means the Trump strategy of getting it to the US Supreme Court probably won't work. Meanwhile, the Trump campaign paid (or promised to pay) Wisconsin $3 million for a partial recount, which result in a net gain of 132 votes--for Biden.

 Then the chief Trump operative of the GSA finally “ascertained” that Joe Biden had won the presidential election, officially beginning the transition. Apart from the certainty of state certifications, a rolling catastrophe of lost court cases, and a rising tide of demands to get on with it, she might have noticed that Biden currently leads by more than 6 million votes, a total of more than 80 million, even before New York state has fully reported. The current percentage is 51% to 47%, and will likely grow. His electoral vote lead hasn’t changed, remaining exactly the number Trump got in 2016. 

 Biden now gets funds and access to vital national security and covid crisis information, and the country and the world knows we indeed have a President-Elect. He’d been selecting and naming Cabinet and other high officials anyway—now he gets to do it using a website with .gov behind it. As for these first moves--mostly Obama-Biden veterans moving up a notch-- the professionals in the relevant departments are overjoyed at his choices, because they will be taken seriously again, as will actually governing. Apart from Barack, John Kerry is the perfect appointment for a Cabinet-level officer on the climate crisis. This as well as other appointments made or reported are playing well internationally also.

 To say the writing was on the wall doesn’t mean much when it’s Trump, who can’t read very well. But the wall was crumbling and starting to tumble down: when Republican Senators actually tell you it’s time to start the Transition, the situation is politically done.  Trump will commit more outrages to keep his picture in the paper for as long as he can, and there will probably be a few more bumps in the process, but maybe we can begin our mental and emotional transitions, too. 

 It’s a victory for democracy also because this caps an election that thousands of public servants worked hard to bring off better than anyone had the right to expect in the year of Covid and Trump, our twin plagues. Too bad there’s vaccines for only one of them, but getting the other out of the White House is worth celebrating, again. With several more opportunities ahead.

Now we just have to get through these horrific weeks of both plagues, especially Covid, as the economy falls apart and the suffering spreads.  This administration is making sure their evil lives after them as they subvert the economy, further confuse covid crisis response and prevent government from helping by starving the states and zoning out on the federal level.   It's like watching a badly written tragedy of the real.

Poetry Monday (and Thursday): Thanks

Thanks

Listen

with the night falling we are saying thank you

 we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings

 we are running out of the glass rooms

 with our mouths full of food to look at the sky

 and say thank you

 we are standing by the water thanking it

 smiling by the windows looking out

 in our directions

 back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging

 after funerals we are saying thank you

 after the news of the dead

 whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

 over telephones we are saying thank you

 in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators

 remembering wars and the police at the door

 and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you

 in the banks we are saying thank you

 in the faces of the officials and the rich

 and of all who will never change

 we go on saying thank you thank you

 with the animals dying around us

 our lost feelings we are saying thank you

 with the forests falling faster than the minutes

 of our lives we are saying thank you

 with the words going out like cells of a brain

 with the cities growing over us

 we are saying thank you faster and faster

 with nobody listening we are saying thank you

 we are saying thank you and waving

 dark though it is

W.S. Merwin

Dreaming Up Daily Quote: Nov. 22, 2020

 

"As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words but to live by them."

President John F. Kennedy

His November 1963 Thanksgiving Message.  He did not live to see that Thanksgiving.  He was shot and killed on November 22, 1963.

Dreaming Up Daily Quote

" Think'st thou that duty shall have dread to speak when power to flattery bows?

 To plainness honor's bound when majesty falls to folly."

Shakespeare

 Kent in King Lear Act I Scene I

Winter Has Come

Winter is here: the coronavirus winter.  The much predicted and feared major surge is well underway, just about everywhere.  That includes here in Humboldt County, which has recorded more new cases in the first two weeks of this month than all of last month.  We have more than triple the number of active cases than we did just weeks ago.  Like most of CA counties, our restrictions have become more stringent again.  Elsewhere the impact is much worse, and because virus begets virus it will get worse still, as winter deepens across the country.

But the contours of the covid crisis may well have changed in recent days, with promising announcements of very effective vaccines, which may immunize for up to a few years.  The vaccines have not finished final trials nor been approved, and even if all goes well it will be months yet before any vaccine becomes widely available.  At best, expectations are that front line health workers could be getting their first immunization shots before the end of 2020 (both vaccines require two shots, about 3 weeks apart.)  But the rest of us likely won't get them until spring, perhaps March or April.

Tbere's additional good news Tuesday in the approval of an at-home covid test.  But I wouldn't count on that being available before the Biden administration, since the current government seems incapable of organized effort.

Here on the isolated North Coast, most of our covid infections come from people traveling into or out of Humboldt, attending large gatherings indoors there or here, and usually both.  Some of them infect others before they know they are infected.  In this we are a somewhat simpler microcosm.  There is so much virus around now in many places that simply gathering is enough to start a superspreader event.  As the covid crisis spirals out of control, more casual contact may be enough for infection.

How bad the winter becomes, and the level of devastation by spring, will partly depend on how many people behave, especially in the upcoming holidays.  The way this country faced the covid crisis in its first months was so hopeful, but that's long past now.  We'll see how many people can forgo Thanksgiving gatherings.  Much will depend on that.  

The news this winter--however it is subsumed by gaudier goings-on--will be of health care workers in crisis, hospitals in crisis, and many more covid dead.  I don't think anybody needs this blog to keep informed on these matters, though I will check in from time to time on the current state of things.  But it's safe to say it is a time of mourning.  There isn't much more that I can do.  I am in the high risk senior group.  Except for one visit to my doctor's office, I have not set foot in a building other than my home since March.  I expect to be here until next March.  So Thanksgiving will not be much of a question for me.

Others, especially seniors, will also be staying home.  It will be as if we are snowed in for the winter, more or less.  We will--and I will--be thinking of other things, doing other things, looking to engage with other things, such as the work of our age, which includes reintegrating the past, especially now that the urgency of the election is over and the results will play out (so far, much as I expected), outside our doors. 

So as I move on to other things here, I must first affirm that I am not otherwise ignoring the unfolding and largely tragic events around me, especially this deadly phase of the covid crisis.  It is going to be the worst so far, though perhaps also the worst period of the covid crisis altogether when it is finally over.   I will bear witness, even if I don't have much to say about it, just as there is little I can do about it except to stay out of its way, and avoid adding to the suffering. 

Our winter rains have begun, a hopeful if uncertain sign.  They complicate our lives--chiefly now our dog walks--but they nourish the spring.  The flowers, W.S. Merwin writes, are "forms of water"---

see how they wake without a question

even though the whole world is burning.

 

Poetry Monday: Days

 Days

Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days,

 Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes,

 And marching single in an endless file,

 Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.

 To each they offer gifts after his will,

 Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all.

 I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp,

 Forgot my morning wishes, hastily

 Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day

 Turned and departed silent. I, too late,

 Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Top photo: recent view through a window of the house in Concord, Massachusetts where Emerson spent his days.

Post-Election Post 2: Outcomes

Bye, Don: it is a major outcome. It is not easy to defeat an incumbent POTUS, especially one who leaves ethics and legalities behind to misuse the office for his own personal and political purposes.

 Joe Biden’s victory is impressive by many measures. His popular vote totals and margin (currently crossing 5 million votes and 50.8%) are historic. According to Ben Mathis-Lilley in Slate: “ Per current estimates, he will receive something like 51.3 percent of the national popular vote, 3 percentage points more than Hillary Clinton and a higher total than any candidate challenging an incumbent president since FDR got 57 percent against Herbert Hoover in 1932. That’s more than Ronald Reagan got (50.7 percent) in his 1980 win over Jimmy Carter, which is still (accurately!) heralded as a paradigm shift in American politics.. When you factor in how high turnout was, Biden will likely end up getting a higher share of all the votes that were theoretically available than Reagan did in his 1984 reelection landslide or Barack Obama did in 2008.” 

 Biden will be President partly because Kamela Harris will be Vice President, and that’s damn good history as well. And they did it in concert with voters who overcame Republican voter suppression, and if you’ve forgotten, some of it is detailed here.

Then there are all the other insidious creeps Trump takes with him. Slate ran a series of short essay goodbyes to his family members. Soon to be gone (at least for awhile) are the family androids: Jared, Ivanka and Melania. In addition, it’s goodbye to the Nazi lawyer Bill Barr and the fundie Nazi android White House flack Kaleigh whatshername.

 Farewell, Betsy De Vos!  Bye Bye Rudy ("a noun and a verb and 9-11") G!  Sayonara, Mike Pomepo—and if Dickens were here to turn this pompous hypocrite into a character, he wouldn’t need to change his name. And what joy to tell Louis De Joy his last federal paycheck is in the mail, after he used the US Postal Service to slow everyone's elses, delay and suppress votes while enriching his own company.

 Oil lobbyist in charge of the Interior David Bernhardt and coal industry minion Andrew Wheeler running EPA, Baby Scalia at Labor, the illegally serving heads of National Intelligence and Homeland Security, John Radcliffe and Chad Wolf, the White House idiots including Chief of Racism Stephen Miller and Chief Virus Enhancer Scott Atlas—don’t let the door smack you in the ass as you leave, no doubt after defecating on your desks. And others too numerous to mention—I can’t wait to forget their names forever.

 (As for exits, I’m still giving good odds that Trump will resign so Pence can pardon him, and he can avoid being around for Biden’s Inaugural. In any case, he’ll be out of the White House long before 1/20.)

 So all that is significant and to the good. President Biden will bring sanity, decorum, ethics and empathy to the White House, as well as non-blonde women and people of color. We’ll get photos of children hugging the President and some good White House concerts again.  And all that will be very welcome.

 But the Blue Tsunami, let alone a blue mini-wave, did not happen, and the consequences are profound. Democrats did not win the Senate majority, and though they could get crucial committee control by winning two run-off elections in Georgia, it’s a longshot.

 I don’t want to prejudge the Biden presidency, and I hope the more optimistic analysts like Politico’s John R. Harris are right.  But without the Senate it seems the Biden presidency can do little but undo some of the administrative damage and otherwise inch forward by executive order and diplomacy (which, given Biden’s knowledge of the federal government and the considerable expertise at his disposal, is not nothing.)

 But he is highly unlikely to get much legislation passed, especially because voters returned prime obstructionist Republican assholes to Congress like Lindsay Graham and Devin Nunes, and most especially because Kentucky voters returned Mitch McConnell to the Senate and therefore Senate leadership. For there is absolutely nothing the amoral McConnell will ever do that isn’t completely to the partisan political benefit of Republicans, especially in the Senate. He did his best to destroy the Obama presidency regardless of consequences to the country and its people, and he will do the same to Biden. His sententious hypocrisy is only a stylistic difference--he's a deadlier Trump. He probably has an even better chance of success against Biden, because Obama had his first two years with congressional majorities.  

While the Trump administration will do as much damage to the federal government as they can on their way out, McConnell will do what he considerably can to sink the economy further, sow chaos in the states and country, and prevent a contrasting single federal response to the covid crisis, regardless of the damage to American lives and civic structures, just so Joe Biden and the Democrats will look bad.

 Democrats theoretically could take the Senate in two years, though the results of this election don’t bode well for that. What they cannot do is undo the damage of failing to take back majorities in state legislatures this year, which is the year that they redistrict. That alone means 10 more long years with Republicans retaining their gerrymandered advantages and perhaps expanding them, to ensure that they hold more power than the raw number of votes they receive would justify, by a lot.

 Further, it is in state legislatures and in state governments that most of the targeted voter suppression efforts begin and take hold. So those structural barriers will also remain, and voting will not be fair, let alone easy, for the foreseeable future.

 Until Election Day, it was possible to see the 2016 Trump victory as a fluke, which voters would repudiate. But now it’s even worse. Because in the past four years, Trump remade the Republican party in his image, and that transformed R party did quite well across the country. So now the Rs have no reason other than their vaporized consciences to repudiate Trumpism, and plenty of reasons to embrace it because it worked for them.

Among its darker features is the liberation of racial and other prejudices, especially very old ones.  Right now Republicans pin their Georgia hopes on the resonance of the name Chuck Schumer in winning those Senate seats and preventing the New York Jew from becoming Majority Leader.  As well as the Blacks taking over Georgia.

 Political pros and media continue to wag their fingers at current fascistic tendencies to deny that votes for Democratic candidates could possibly be legitimate, warning that it will “damage the Republican brand” or do “ serious long-term harm” to the party. Nonsense. This election proved it will not. The R enablers of our relentless baby psychopath chief executive, our apprentice dictator, our Homegrown Hitler, didn’t pay a price for enabling him. They were rewarded. We can fully expect this to continue, as Republicans do everything in their considerable power to thwart Biden on every issue, no matter how many people suffer as a consequence.

 Trump leaves him with a government depleted of talent, experience and confidence, infiltrated by devious zealots with a taste for anarchy. He leaves behind a raging pandemic and deeply wounded economy because of his inaction, and by February 1 Republicans will be castigating Biden for ineffective leadership, for pandemic deaths and for a by then more obviously weak economy. And they will do everything that can to make sure there is no recovery from either, so they can keep the Senate and retake the House in two years, and retake the White House in four. And right now, I would not bet against them. Especially since Democrats are already at war with each other, engaged in ideological recriminations as a result of electoral failures.

 But even if the Biden administration works some minor miracles, as we devoutly wish that it will, the prospects of a longer term future were significantly dimmed by this election and what it revealed. What America needed was a new coalition sweeping into power, ushering in an administration as transformational as FDR’s New Deal. We needed it for the next four years and even more for the future ahead.

 It may be that the climate crisis is so far advanced that nothing will prevent the collapse of civilizations and the end of the web of life as we know it on this planet in the next century or two. But with an organized, concerted effort, and a galvanized country concentrating on solving common problems rather than fighting for stupid partisan advantage (though with plenty of room for dissent and alternatives), perhaps we had a chance. We need that kind of cohesion just to face the effects of the climate crisis we are feeling now and will feel more and more in greater scope and extremes. But it is clear we don’t have that now. 

 This election once again proves the enduring power of denial. Although exit polls may be as bullshit as polling in general was this year, they did indicate that presidential voters more often voted on economic issues than the pandemic. So Trump may have succeeded in talking down the pandemic, because that’s what people want to hear: it’s overblown, it’s a hoax, get back to normal.

 For the animal reaction to even a visible danger like the covid crisis is not only fight or flight. There is also the deer in the headlights. Humans consciously experience this sometimes as they witness something awful and feel, “this isn’t happening.” That might well be the animal seed of human denial.  The rest is a complex interaction of individual psychologies with reinforcement from culture and social groups to which humans desperately cling.

 If nothing else, the silence of the polls suggests that more and more, when a lot of people stare at a secret ballot, they go into a dark place. And we’re not even at the end of this logical chain of consequences. 

 The twisted and heavily leveraged interpretation of the Second Amendment that quickly resulted in AK-47s at political demonstrations (not to mention bars) has already blinded half the country to the tragedies as well as the implications of the massacres of children, Blacks and Jews. Now a prominent R politician in Florida advocates citizens be legally permitted to shoot to kill demonstrators and trespassers.

 How long will it be before the impulse of ordinary Americans to come to the aid of disaster victims begins to falter based on whether the disaster happens in a blue or red state? (Ask poor people and/or people of color about that.) 

 In any case, a little less than half of the country thinks the rest of it is evil, if not willing participants in kidnapping and eating children. And a little more than half thinks the rest of it is, one way or another, crazy. They share increasingly fewer facts, evaluations, assumptions, world views and even values. It’s a lot more than red or blue.

 So we can rejoice at the election of Biden-Harris and the changes that it brings. But we can also note, along with Tom Nichols in the Atlantic that “a large portion of the electorate chose the sociopath.”

 So we had a barely literate, incompetent sociopath on display for four years, completely without ethics or empathy, and transparently concerned only with himself. He presided over a non-response to a pandemic that has killed more Americans than any recent war plus acts of terrorism that so inflamed the country that it gave away some of its freedoms, and still stands in airport lines with belts and shoes in hand, or it would if flying didn't infect you.  He allowed the economy to sink into untold depths, persecuted brown immigrants and children, all of which is still causing immense suffering and will have lasting effects for at least a generation. He lacerated civic norms, robbed the federal treasury and his own followers, made a mockery of the law, and severely wounded the institutions of governance. He is an obvious con man and grifter, a convicted thief (if only in civil cases so far), a serial liar who makes absurd claims without even bothering to organize credible evidence, and a loudmouth lout.  He made the White House the tragic laughingstock of the world for four years.   He was the 21st century Richard III.  And he got 70 million votes. The party that supported him remains a powerful and destructive force.

 So what would it take? We had the most powerful and widespread wild fires in history, more hurricanes than the alphabet has letters,  and oppressive and killing weather caused by the climate crisis, plus a global pandemic that is killing hundreds of thousands of Americans and disrupting the economy and society for most people. This wasn’t enough? 

 We had a coalition of races, of the youngest and oldest voters, of women generally, with the unprecedented support of prominent Republicans of the recent past. This wasn’t enough? 

 We had a cartoon psychopath as president, who brought ruin, incompetence and corruption so obvious,  racist hate so stark and simplistic, and this wasn’t enough? To repudiate him completely, as well as all those moral cowards who followed and enabled him?

 Then what would be enough? 

 Maybe there’s time. Time for some other catastrophe to force recognition of the need to foresee before disaster, or even see a disaster for what it is. Time for demography to reshape the political landscape. Time for a new America. But maybe it’s not just my time to see it that’s running out.

Poetry Monday: Easy by nature

Easy by nature

 True goodness

 is like water. 

Water’s good

 for everything.

 It doesn’t compete.

 It goes right

 to the low loathsome places, 

and so finds the way. 

 For a house,

 the good thing is level ground.

 In thinking,

 depth is good. 

The good of giving is magnanimity;

 of speaking, honesty;

 of government, order.

 The good of work is skill,

 and of action, timing. 

 No competition,

 so no blame. 

 Ursula K. LeGuin’s version of No. 8, Tao Te Ching

Day of Joy

I expected relief, but Saturday turned out to be a day of joy. 

 When in late morning Eastern time, the networks and AP finally called Pennsylvania (throwing in Nevada shortly afterwards) and therefore affirming the presidency for Joe Biden, cheers rippled through the nation and spontaneous demonstrations began.

 Someone said she was approaching the Saturday farmer’s market when she heard cheers erupt ahead of her, and she knew exactly what they had to mean. And pretty soon there was dancing in the streets of Philadelphia. 

 Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, which had been the scene of police violence and angry demonstrations, became a happy party, all the way down to the gates of the White House. 

 And it happened all around the country, in cities and suburbs and towns. The cheering from individual buildings could be heard wafting into the air in New York City. (This Guardian video captured some of these moments.)

 “I had to explain to my kids just now that this is not the normal level of celebration after an election in America,” tweeted Preet Bharara. “It feels like Joe Biden also won the World Cup.”

 The joy extended beyond the shores. “In countries across the globe, people reported fireworks, cheering and the sound of church bells ringing after President-elect Joe Biden was named the winner of the 2020 presidential election,” wrote The Hill.

 There were also tears—of joy and something more. Here for example are the eloquent tears of Van Jones on CNN. 

The joy came from the people who made it happen. “Robert Mueller didn’t save us,” tweeted Jennifer Taub. “Impeachment didn’t save us. We saved ourselves. We voted. The people have spoken. Donald, you’re fired.”

" I am listening to honking horns, clattering pots, cheers, and joyful shouts," wrote journalist Eric Levitz. “My neighborhood – circumscribed along race and/or class lines in normal times, atomized into a collection of masked individuals in the COVD era – is sharing a collective experience of joy. Beneath the mutual suspicions, poisonous power imbalances, bigotries and species of self-absorption that color social life in this place, there is a low hum of shared values and solidarity, and today, Trump’s defeat made it loud enough to hear.”

" From the moment CNN made the official call onward, we finally got the catharsis that had been so sorely lacking on Tuesday night, and I think it felt just as good as it would have on November 3," concluded New York Magazine associate editor Benjamin Hart. “The celebrations in the streets of Brooklyn, where I live, and in cities across the country were reminders that unalloyed political joy is still possible.” 

 

Later in the evening darkness of Wilmington, celebration met drama when the Vice-President Elect strode onto the stage, in a symbolic white suit—the color of the Sufragettes. From that moment Kamala Harris and then President-Elect Joe Biden grew into their roles before our eyes, with confidence and clarity.

 “And when our very democracy was on the ballot in this election with the very soul of America at stake and the world watching, you ushered in a new day for America,” Kamala Harris said.” And you delivered a clear message. You chose hope and unity, decency, science, and yes, truth!”

 As the first woman and first woman of color to be elected Vice-President, she spoke to the girls watching, too young to remember President Obama. “Because every little girl watching tonight sees that this is a country of possibilities and to the children of our country regardless of your gender, our country has sent you a clear message: dream with ambition, lead with conviction and see yourselves in a way that others may not simply because they've never seen it before.”

Of her own role she pledged: “I will strive to be a vice president like Joe was to President Obama, loyal, honest, and prepared, waking up every day thinking of you and your family, because now is when the real work begins, the hard work, the necessary work, the good work, the essential work...” 

 

Then Joe Biden bounded onto the stage, jogging to the podium, and gave the most energetic, concentrated, powerful speech I’ve seen him make since the 2008 or 2012 Democratic Convention. Even with a few specific echoes of President Obama, it was all Biden.

 He remarked on this day of joy.  “And what I must admit has surprised me, tonight we're seeing all over this nation, all cities in all parts of the country, indeed across the world, an outpouring of joy, of hope of renewed faith in tomorrow, bring a better day. And I'm humbled by the trust and confidence you've placed in me.”

" The Bible tells us, “to everything there is a season: a time to build, a time to reap, and a time to sow and a time to heal.” This is the time to heal in America. “ A time to heal became the universal headline. 

Then Biden forecast his priorities. "Now this campaign is over, what is the will of the people? What is our mandate? I believe it's this: Americans have called upon us to marshal the forces of decency, the forces of fairness, to marshal the forces of science and the forces of hope in the great battles of our time. The battle to control the virus. The battle to build prosperity. The battle to secure your family's health care. The battle to achieve racial justice and root out systemic racism in this country. And the battle to save our planet by getting climate under control. The battle to restore decency, defend democracy, and give everybody in this country a fair shot. “

 And then, the fireworks over the parking lot.

 “Protecting our democracy takes struggle,” Kamala Harris had concluded. “It takes sacrifice. But there is joy in it.” There was on Saturday.

      Pittsburgh South Side.  That white building was my bank when I lived on the South Side.

                                               Georgia

                                                            Miami

                                             Grand Lake, California

Post Election Post 1: Voting Heroes

                                                Counting votes in Georgia

So it’s taking a little longer, mostly because of the gun-shy network decision desks, but okay, instead of discussing the outcome, let’s consider the process.  

The process should be celebrated--though not the entire process. The most obviously broken part of how America does elections is polling. I’m sure the polling geeks will point out how they didn’t actually mess up big time, not really. But really, they did.

 Polling organizations, and media organizations that sponsor and prominently report polls, constitute one industry feeding off the election process. Another is the marketing and advertising industry that spends the money the campaigns raise from contributors. Those contributors got pretty much nothing for their money this year. The millions of dollars that the Democrats spent did nothing, and may have been counterproductive. It was excessive, especially during a pandemic when that money could have been contributed to organizations supporting public health. 

 Will campaign pros look at all this honestly? Can they afford to? Without the information from polls, without the go-to option of buying TV ad time etc., how are all these folks going to stay in business?

 Those are the broken parts of the process. The parts that came out of this shining, that minted heroes, were the people in Pennsylvania and Georgia, in North Carolina, Florida and Texas and across the country who worked themselves into a frazzle to get out the vote, to walk voters through the minefields that politicians created to keep them from voting.

 Vote suppression is not new to Georgia, but it was relentless, and they overcame it. Those people are heroes. And it looks like they’ll have to try to do it again but even bigger in the January run-offs, for the D’s to get the Senate. 

 In Florida and Texas and elsewhere, vote and voter suppression  were fought against but were factors again, though in the post-election period of recrimination and analysis, this will probably be forgotten. Except by the people who live there, who will fight back against it again next time.

 And then there are the people who counted the votes, especially in the most contested states where they were under enormous pressure. The election officials by and large kept their nerve, and the poll workers kept their heads in working long and exacting hours to mollify a restless electorate while making sure that ever vote was accurately counted. 

 And the voters, celebrated here in earlier posts, who came out in record numbers, masked up in long lines, to partake of this sacred American process. There was little violence or disruption, and voters often thwarted suppression efforts, though those efforts succeeded enough to affect the elections. 

 I heard that word “sacred” spoken about this election, not only by Joe Biden but notably by others, including network reporters, in connection with Homegrown Hitler’s White House whine that he really won except for everybody who voted against him, by definition fraudulently. He violated this sacred process of elections, the television reporters said.

 From the nuns in Catholic school I learned about two systems of the sacred: the Church and American democracy. Both had clear principles, moral foundations, systems of authority, checks and balances. By the middle of high school my misgivings about the Church were becoming a little less than silently ascendant, but my faith in American democracy grew stronger. The reason was simple: there were lines of authority and rules for all, including the basic rule that everyone could debate and dissent, and in the end, a lot was decided by votes.

 

By college my faith in the Church slipped away entirely, and though my faith in American democracy was taken beyond the breaking point in the Vietnam 1960s, and I endured more heartbreaking and mind-wrenching election nights (Nixon, Reagan, Bush, Bush) than nights that confirmed my confidence (Clinton, Obama), I never completely lost my faith in the process of debate and my awe for the process of voting. Yes, it was sacred. And human. And a prime definition of American.

 I also enjoyed the act of voting, the rituals of it, the secret ballot, inking in my choices and only my choices, seeing the ballot join the stream, while old ladies at tables smiled at me.   

In my hometown of Greensburg where I voted (and worked the polls for candidates) among people I sort of knew, and in Pittsburgh, where I saw familiar politicians canvassing from the required distance, and where I could buy a paper cup of coffee and a sweet roll from the bake sale after I voted. Things were more antiseptic in California, but still.. I was ecstatic to vote for Barack Obama four times (including two primaries) in a huge veteran’s hall that has to be one of the older buildings in Arcata. In a few elections before that I liked the idea of voting in a nearby public school. When we moved, we could vote there just by walking to the end of our street.

 Things were different this year of course. We all voted by mail, which works fine, here. Except for certain new wrinkles in voter suppression, the voting process was the most normal part of this election and these last four political years. 

 There are probably a dozen reasons why American democracy is so broken right now. But the signs are everywhere. In just the past week a federal judge ordered the head of the US Postal Service to take extraordinary measures to deliver completed ballots in time. He not only failed to do so. He out and out refused to comply. And upwards of 150,000 ballots didn’t make it. Even a few years ago, and certainly in my youth, that casual defiance would be unimaginable.

 It’s not a direct analogue but it is something else that has seemingly become normal but which is unprecedented in my lifetime: not just that the President of the United States makes dangerous and scurrilous charges from the White House podium, but that the major American networks immediately cut away from the scene, and prominent television reporters expressed in their words and manner utter contempt for him. This is also what we’ve come to. What much of this year’s voting expressed turned out to be doleful. And yet, even now, when the voting process is so wounded and defiled, I can’t help still seeing its beauty.